I use AI to suggest titles and SEO data for my posts. And every time I put in something about porn, what it kicks back includes the words “porn addiction”.
Here’s the thing; porn addiction is not a real thing. Addiction is a word that has a specific meaning, and porn doesn’t check all the boxes. Those who argue porn can be addictive point out that porn use activates areas of the brain similar to those activated by using drugs. But no one has been able to show that porn use changes your brain chemistry the way true additions do, because that doesn’t happen.
Anyone who claims porn is addictive is ignoring science.
This is not to say porn is not a problem, or that it’s not difficult to walk away from. Porn use can be compulsive or obsessive, and habitual use can be a major problem.
So why does it matter that it’s not a true addiction? It matters because it’s virtually impossible to end an addiction without help. Cold turkey almost always fails when done alone, and weaning oneself without help also fails. A habit on the other hand can be dealt with by making life changes and exercising self-control.
I think those who struggle with porn want it to be an addiction so they feel less guilt about continuing to do it. Guys, it’s a lie. You’re not addicted, and if you want to stop, you can. I’m not going to tell you stopping is easy, but plenty of guys have done it, and so can you.
Thought question: if you knew that willingly looking at porn one more time would result in the end of your marriage, might you find the ability to stop? What if you knew everyone you know would be shown the porn you watched, would that put you off it?
I came across an interesting blog post by a Petra Zebroff Ph.D. She has been a sex therapist and educator for 20 years and has a doctorate in human sexuality. She was seeing more and more women who felt there was something wrong with them for not having an orgasm during intercourse because “Every woman I see can orgasm without touching the clitoris.” And the “I see” part was clearly about the porn they saw. Zebroff was also hearing from men who were worried something was wrong with them because “their penis doesn’t give their partner an orgasm”.
Most women need more than the thrusting of intercourse to come. This is a well established fact – at least outside the false reality of porn.
Dr Zebroff and a colleague looked at the 80 most viewed videos on Pornhub and XHamster, and recoded all the touch. They found that only 8% of the genial touch for women involved the clitoris. But of course, the women in the videos were having screaming orgasms from intercourse, with little or no foreplay.
This is why I hate porn: It teaches us lies! Dr Zebroff said her young female clients understand the importance of clitoral touch for sexual pleasure, but still feel there’s something wrong with them for needing it. The porn they have watched has supplanted their knowledge. It had voided the right teaching they received, resulting in sexual distress.
If you’ve seen porn, it’s messed up your sexuality. And if you’re still viewing it, it’s continuing to mess it up. If you want a good sex life with your wife, you must avoid porn. It’s just that simple.
I’ve often said porn is not primarily about sex. Sex is the hook and what gives porn its power, but the real issue is self-medicating.
One place where this is difficult to see is when a man is using porn because his sex life with his wife is lacking. He sees it as being about sex, but it’s actually self-medicating the pain of sexual refusal.
Porn is about sex in that it makes us horny, which makes any orgasm we have better. Masturbation feels better with porn. It results in greater physical pleasure, and it tricks us into thinking we’re connecting with another person sexually. This medicates the pain of our wife not providing the sex we want and need. But it cuts both ways; it also makes sex with our wife less likely and less enjoyable when it happens.
Of course, porn is used to medicate far more than sexual refusal. This is why we tend to slip when we’re feeling down or stressed. Porn is a quick, easy fix when we don’t feel the way we want to. It’s no different from drugs, alcohol, food, gambling, or any of the other ways we self-medicate.
I’m all for you getting free of porn. But if you don’t deal with the root problem, you may turn to another, possibly more destructive, form of self-medicating.
Dealing with the root problem doesn’t mean making it go away, because that’s not always possible. Sometimes you have to learn to cope, or find a healthy way to deal with the pain.
If you’ve tried and failed to get free of porn, figure out why you use it. Deal with that, and walking away from porn will become possible.
I have long eschewed the anti-porn arguments that talk about how the women in porn are all victims who users are abusing. You know what I mean – claims that those who are not being forced to do it are only doing it because they grew up being sexually abused and don’t know any better. Aside from the fact that this has not been true for many decades, it misses the real point for those of us who follow Jesus.
Now, as we stand on the precipice of AI porn that is indistinguishable from real people, we see why this argument was dangerous. I already deal with teens and young adults who argue hentai (pornographic anime or manga comics) is okay because there are no real people involved. Soon you will be able to put a few parameters into a porn AI and watch anything you want – with no real people involved. And some Christians are going to ask “how could that be wrong” because we have failed to explain the issue properly.
As an example of how realistic AI porn will soon be, the image with this post is AI generated. It’s one of thousands of such images on Adobe Stock Images. It’s also one of the least sexual and smallest busted.
In Matthew 5:28 Jesus said, “…everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” [ESV] So how do we parse that in our modern world? A picture or video of a woman is not the woman. Some argue porn is not wrong for this reason. The problem with this is it misses the point. The focus of what Jesus is saying is the man’s heart.
Let’s say, you imagine you’re having sex with your wife. Except her breasts are bigger, her pubic hair has been removed (something she has refused to do), and she is doing and enjoying some sex act you know she would never do. You’re not actually fantasising about your wife, are you? Giving her your wife’s face and name doesn’t make her your wife, and your wife is the only person you should be having sexual thought about, or being aroused by. The real problem with porn is that it detracts from your sex life with your wife. Or future wife if you are single. Porn hurts and limits real life sex, and removing real woman from it doesn’t change that.
Of course, AI porn will be far more damaging. Initially, image generation was offered by folks who wanted to avoid the legal quagmire of doing porn. Not that the safeguards in place are foolproof. But dedicated AI porn sites have already been built, and the flood of them is coming. Men will be able to virtually create their perfect woman. Get her hair, breasts, and genitals just the right size, shape, and colour – even if the result is impossible for flesh and blood. What’s more, these fake vixens can be made to preform sex acts no real woman could do, and seem to enjoy things that would hurt a real woman. I fear we will soon have young men who can’t have, or won’t even want to have, sex with real women because they can’t live up to AI fantasy sex.
This issue is here now, and we need to be aware of it. We need to protect ourselves, and our children. And we need to stand firm on the fact that getting sexually aroused by anyone or anything other than our wife is wrong and harmful.
If you’ve followed me very long, you know I don’t see masturbation to be inherently wrong. If your wife won’t have nearly as much sex as you need, it’s better than walking around horny most of the time. If you and your wife have a great sex life and you occasionally like to masturbate on top of that, I see nothing wrong with that. If you turn to solo sex when the two of you are apart or when she’s too sick for sex, I see that as both wise and loving.
However, if your wife is willing and you masturbate instead, that’s a problem. According to 1 Cor 7 doing that is defrauding your wife. It’s not just wrong, it’s sin. She is your first source for sex and she gets the right of first refusal.
Most wive’s assume secret masturbation is about porn. That’s not always the case, even if porn is involved.
Some guys masturbate to reduce how often they “bother” their wife for sex. They think it’s loving. Or more realistically, they think it avoids fights about sex. If your wife knows you supplement the sex you have with her, knows how often you do it, and is okay with that, that’s one thing. If she doesn’t know you go it alone or thinks you do it a few times a month when you actually do it several times a week, that’s a problem. If she knew how often you do it she might realise you really do need more sex. And that would be a good thing. And regardless of her reaction, she should know.
Some men say masturbation is a different enjoyable thing they occasionally want no matter how much sex they have with their wife. I don’t get that, but I accept it’s valid for some of you. If you can explain that to your wife and she’s okay with it, fine. If you do it secretly I see it as a problem because you’re lying to her.
Then there are the men who start to masturbate because of sexual problems. They find it difficult to get or keep an erection and that embarrasses them, so they masturbate instead. Others find that keeping an erection requires vigorous thrusting that results in climaxing too fast. Again, DIY is less embarrassing. Denying her sex because of your embarrassment is unloving and it’s sin. Get help so you can stay hard or learn ways to make sex work for both of you.
In general, if your wife is unaware you’re masturbating, or unaware of how often you do it, that’s harmful to your marriage and wrong. The one exception I can see is if you have explained the need to your wife, she refused to do more, and would see masturbation as sin and betrayal. If she won’t take care of it, take care of it discretely yourself.
Have you ever heard of Rat Park? Canadian psychologist Bruce K. Alexander built it in the late ’70s to test a theory about drug use.
You’ve probably heard about rats that will ignore plain water and keep drinking water laced with heroin or cocaine until they overdose and die. But Alexander noted these rats were living alone in small cages – a very depressing situation for a rat. So he built a large area with abundant food, balls and running wheels for play, places to sleep, and enough space for mating. Then he placed 16 to 20 rats of both sexes in the park. What he found was that these rats rarely drank the drugged water, only did so in small amounts, and never overdosed. He also found that formerly cages rats that had been drinking drugs kicked the habit when moved to Rat Park, while those who grew up in Rat Park and were moved to small solitary cages drank the drugs till they overdosed.
His conclusion was that rats became addicted to drugs when they were living in bad conditions, but not when in a good living situation. This suggests that high drug use in poverty-stricken areas is a reaction to poverty, not the other way around. It also suggests that social isolation leads to more addictive behaviour.
I’ve long been of the mind that porn is more about self-medicating pain than sex. If you need porn to masturbate, you don’t actually need to masturbate. The reality is we get a high from porn. It makes us feel good and it makes us feel manly.
Now obviously, being refused sex is a downer and we may turn to porn to medicate that disappointment. We may also feel somewhat justified because we’ve been refused sex. But the reality is we could accomplish the same thing by getting drunk or high.
There are men who get plenty of sex who use porn. For them, the trigger is something else. It might be marriage issues, problems at work, or worries about money, family, or their health. Research on this is limited, but there are several studies that show depression and anxiety to be predictors for problematic porn use.
Like any self-medication, porn doesn’t help. You feel better for a bit, but the problems are still there. The solution is to figure out what is pushing you to use porn and deal with it.
Sex is a very individual thing, and what we want, enjoy, dislike, and hate is very much a result of who we are and what has gone before. Of course, we don’t see this, because we accept the whole package deal as what is natural for us without analysing why it’s natural for us.
Sexual preferences are set by both what we do sexually and what we view, read, and hear about. This means many of your preferences may have been set before you ever had sex. It also means your preferences are shaped by your culture and subculture. If you grew up when I did, all the women of porn had pubic hair, so that was normal. But that might make shaved especially interesting to you because it’s different. If you grew up with all the women of porn being shaved, pubic hair might be interesting because it’s different.
Most men have preferences in terms of how a woman looks, caring about breast size, buttocks, legs, and even how her vulva looks. Some of this is about what we have seen, but there’s more to it. When I was a teen most guys were all about massive fake boobs, but a porn magazine that only showed women with very small breasts was popular at the same time. Why some were one way and others were different I don’t know. My experience, and that of many men I have talked to, is that such preferences are rather flexible. If you marry a woman who is different from what you prefer your preference may move towards what she is in time.
Sexual practice preferences are largely a result of what we have learned. Seeing something over and over in porn can create a preference. Our early sexual experiences can also form preferences. If the sex was secretive that may make the preference especially strong.
Our personality is a big part of our sexuality. If you love variety and adventure in other areas of your life, you will likely seek that in your sex life. If you tend towards the simple in general, your sexual desire will likely also be simple. Your wife will be the same way. If your personality and sexuality seem at odds, that may be an indication your sexuality has been limited or damaged in some way. Likewise for your wife. This is not always the case, but it should make you ask some questions.
The past is a huge factor in our sexuality. Yes, that means the sex you had when you were younger, but it goes way beyond that. If your mother slapped your hand or said negative things when you tried to touch your penis during diaper changes, that affects how you see your penis and your sexuality. Of course, you wouldn’t remember that, but it might still be affecting you. What and how you were taught about your body at puberty also had a powerful impact. If you had to hide to masturbate, that affected you differently than if you were told it was a good and normal thing. All of the same things have affected your wife’s sexuality and probably more strongly than is the case for you.
It is believed that most fetishes originate at a young age, and may be triggered by things that are not overtly sexual. Early exposure to sex by pornography, abuse, or accidentally seeing someone having sex may influence your sexual desires in later life. One recent study found that childhood psychological, sexual, and physical abuse all more than double the incidence of sadomasochistic sexual desires as an adult. And various kinds of abuse are linked to the development of different types of sexual preferences.
The good news is we can overcome sexual scripts that come from our pasts. Neither you nor your wife is stuck with what you have; you can grow beyond it. Negative impulses, fear, and troubling desires can be reduced and even eliminated, and new desires and pleasures can be cultivated. This can be slow going, and for some, it will require third party help, but it can be done.
The takeaway here is that your sex life is a mishmash of you and your wife’s preferences, pasts, and personalities. If some of that doesn’t work for you as a couple, you can change it. Don’t just accept what you have, because change is possible.
Yesterday I gave an example of making our problem a problem for our wife. There are a great many ways men and women do this to their spouses and all of them are destructive, hurtful, and unloving.
Before I list a few examples, let me be clear that some of our “problems” are beyond our control and I’m not talking about those. If you’re colour blind, asking your wife for help discerning colours is not a problem. Any disability or inability falls into this category. You could make it a problem for her if you’re unreasonable, but expecting her to lovingly help you is neither selfish nor wrong.
Here are a few common things that men make into problems for their wives:
Anger: Anger is a choice. Some gave up the choice so long ago that they no longer have the ability to stop, but not getting help for that is also a choice. Anger hurts those around the angry person even if it’s not aimed at them.
Addictions: It’s obvious that being an alcoholic or a drug addict hurts your wife. Other things that are not classic addictions can also become a problem for your wife. Overuse of video games, excessive hunting or fishing, or too much time watching sports can all become her problem. None of these is wrong, it’s the lack of self-control that is the problem.
Always Running Late: Again, this is a choice. If you choose to be tardy all the time it is almost certainly causing problems for your wife. BTW, demanding you always arrive early for everything can also be a problem.
Your Sexual Choices: Porn use is the obvious one here, but there are others. If you have decided you will never be satisfied with sex until she does oral regularly, you have made your desire her problem. Likewise, if you expect sex daily regardless of what is happening in her life.
Failure to Parent: Your kids need a full-time mother and a full-time father. If you’re not doing your part, that’s a huge problem for your wife. And for your kids!
I could go on, but this should be enough to get you thinking. Do you have a problem that has become your wife’s problem? Better yet, if I asked your wife that question, what would she say?
A post worth reading:
The Generous Wife | Happy Camper◄ Do things she enjoys!
